Board of directors · Salem
Robert Tanaka
Director
“A farm has one payday a year. A bank that doesn't understand that isn't a bank for farmers.”
Third-generation Willamette Valley farmer and former president of the Oregon Hazelnut Growers' cooperative. The board's voice for agricultural customers.
- [email protected]
- Phone
- +1 (503) 555-0171
- Office
- Salem branch
- With Meridian since
- 2016
The story
Robert's grandparents were interned at Minidoka during the Second World War and returned to Oregon in 1945 to find their farm near Woodburn sold out from under them. They started again on leased land. His father bought the land back in 1962, acre by acre, with a loan from a bank that, Robert notes, no longer exists. He farms it today: 600 acres of hazelnuts and grass seed.
He studied agricultural economics at Oregon State and came home to the farm in 1984. He served three terms as president of the Oregon Hazelnut Growers' cooperative, negotiating the marketing agreements that took Oregon hazelnuts into Asian export markets. He joined Meridian Trust's board in 2016 as its first director with a farming background.
He is the reason the bank has an agricultural lending desk. In his first year on the board he laid out, in a single meeting, how a hazelnut orchard's cash flow works: seven years from planting to first crop, one harvest a year, all the income arriving in November. The bank's standard loan products didn't fit, so it built new ones. Agricultural lending is now a fifth of the bank's loan book.
Robert and his wife Susan live on the farm. Their son Kenji is taking over the operation; their daughter is a public defender in Portland. His grandparents' Minidoka identification tags hang in the farm office.
Off duty
When not at the bank
Bonsai
He tends about forty trees, several started by his grandfather in the 1950s, including a Japanese black pine that is older than he is. He judges at the Portland Bonsai Society's annual show.
Vintage tractors
Four restored John Deeres from the 1940s and '50s, all running. He drives the 1949 Model B in the Woodburn Fiesta Mexicana parade every August.
Duck hunting
Opening weekend on the Sauvie Island wildlife area with the same three friends since 1979. 'The ducks are mostly safe. It's about the breakfast.'
Ask me about
Education
- B.S. Agricultural & Resource Economics, Oregon State University, 1984
- Oregon Agricultural Leadership Program, 1991
